Articles Posted in Civil Rights

A Virginia high school student and his father have filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Fairfax County Public Schools, claiming the school discriminated against the student because of his gender, after he was accused of sexual misconduct. The plaintiffs claim three female students “colluded” in their accusations against the boy and that his…

Recently, a group of women filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Facebook, arguing that the social media platform and certain companies posting ads on it have engaged in gender discrimination. These companies used Facebook to advertise positions in occupations such as the trucking industry, but they allegedly…

On Thursday, August 30, 2018, arbitrator Stephen B. Burbank ruled that Colin Kaepernick's lawyers presented enough evidence in his collusion case against the National Football League to proceed to a full hearing. Kaepernick's lawyers will be presented with the opportunity to question league officials, owners, and other parties with regard to the collusion case.

Court papers filed late last week show that according to the government's most recent estimates, close to 500 children, including 22 under the age of 5, remain in US custody after being separated from their parents at the border earlier this year pursuant to the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy. The greatest logistical challenge that government officials and immigrants' rights advocates have faced in reuniting many of these children with their families is that their parents were deported without them, and are now proving difficult if not impossible to locate.

A bill aimed to help employees who have experienced sexual harassment and discrimination on the job sue their employers in a court of law, rather than private arbitration, has been passed by the California Assembly.

On Thursday, August 16, 2018, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed a Texas District Court's dismissal of a lawsuit brought by three University of Texas at Austin professors. Professors Jennifer Lynn Glass, Lisa Moore, and Mia Carter challenged a Texas law permitting the concealed carry of handguns on the University of Texas campus, along with a University of Texas policy forbidding professors from banning concealed weapons in classrooms.

In a joint status report filed last week, the Department of Justice provided its most detailed figures to date regarding the status of migrant children who were separated from their parents at the border this year under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy, stating that 24 children under the age of 5 remain separated. Under the policy, the administration separated more than 2,600 children from their parents, and reports that over 360 parents who are still separated are outside the country, with many having been deported without their children.

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Nike by four female employees who worked in the company’s corporate headquarters which claim violations of the Equal Pay Act. The lawsuit further claims Nike ignored rampant sexual harassment in the company.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the US District Court for the District of Columbia halted the deportation in progress of a mother and daughter this week, and threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt due to the fact that court proceedings appealing their deportation were in progress. An attorney for the ACLU, which filed a lawsuit on August 7, 2018 challenging the Department of Justice's recent policy change that aims to fast track the removal of asylum seekers who do not pass their credible fear interviews, and eliminates gang and domestic violence as grounds for seeking asylum in the US, received a notice in the middle of a hearing on the case before Judge Sullivan that the mother and daughter were on a deportation flight to El Salvador.

Judge Dana Sabraw strongly rejected the Trump Administration's recent argument that the ACLU and other immigrants' rights advocates should be responsible for locating the more than 450 immigrant parents the administration deported after separating them from their children earlier this year. The judge said it is "100%" the government's responsibility to locate and reunite deported parents with their children, and stated that if it fails to do so, it will have "permanently orphaned" the children it separated from them.